Dispirited,
we return to our fractured shells,
wilted, deflated
like balloons, bursting.
We return to shards
of a once bustling sanguinity,
our sides ragged,
our shields cracked,
our ramparts quivering,
from the fiercest melee
with a towering rival.
Before the flags be raised
and we be pronounced
heroes, fought and failed;
before drums be drummed
to tout our homecoming,
let it be known
that we return, not with heads high
and breasts bristling,
not with hands shooting the wind
to propound victory.
Our heads are bowed
and our egos curled,
shriveled, charred
in red-hot furnaces.
We failed!
We return to our places
with ashes on our heads
and eyes pinned to the earth.
We, seeds of this new indulgence:
Of kites, strong and spacious,
floating man in mid-heaven.
Of words sent to distant places
through lines and lines
wattle and slim.
We failed,
We who dole this mutation,
To preserve the hearth
in the middle,
the centre point,
the essence of all innovation:
Ease, love,
A hand over a shoulder,
solidarity flailing up high.
We know how to build steeples
but not how to build love.
We have failed!
For folly it is to rise
without love.
And we, harbingers
of the coming oblivion,
warriors of preservation
and continuity,
we failed!
The world decays,
steadily.
It is beyond our reach
to avert what is coming for it.
So with our heads buried
in shame,
our clouts stripped,
our flags droopy,
we return to our shells,
broken, flattened
like levelled pottery.
Perhaps solace can be found
in the remaining sunsets
just before the end,
like a decided switch,
topples all we fought for
into mangled nothingness.
